Egg Painting 2015

A couple of years back, my Mum came across a method of painting eggs using silk ties and so we decided to try it out this year.

I asked my lovely nieces to bring along some colourful printed silk ties from charity shops. The uglier the better really. I'd also found a few and so we set about to rip them up. This needs to be done fairly gently and the idea is to open them up and remove the stiff fabric inside and just have the thin silk left.

Once this is done, we cut off pieces large enough to cover one egg, we wet the silk under the tap, then covered one egg, making sure to have the front side of the fabric towards the egg shell and also making sure it stuck to the surface with no gaps.

The next thing was to wrap in a piece of cheese cloth and tie tightly using wire ties I have left over from various food bags I've bought in the past.

Once all eggs were covered like that, we placed them in a a casserole dish, poured hot water onto them to cover completely. I added a bout 1 dl of white wine vinegar put the lid on and put the casserole dish to boil. I also fired up the extractor fan and also opened the windows and closed the kitchen door.

20 minutes later, I took the casserole dish off the hob and put under the cold water tap to speed up the cooling.

Once the eggs were cool enough, Lou, Falbala and Lou's boyfriend came over to unwrap the eggs and inspect the results. I tried one chicken egg and one duck egg and curiously enough, the duck egg didn't take to the silk paints as well.

It could be because I might have wrapped the duck egg with the inside side of the silk, but I don't think so. I had a couple of other ties, which had a woven effect and they didn't transfer well at all. So it must be a flat printed pattern and 100% silk and I suspect a silk scarf would work just as well. The cheese cloth can be swapped for pieces of old pillow cases, but should be white and the purpose I think is to prevent the silk colours from mixing up. Just make sure the kitchen is well ventilated while boiling because it smells really bad. But this was good fun and very easy and there are plenty of ties left over for next year. I'll just have to make sure to take a photo before they all disappear off.